They also had a 2.3 fold increased risk of suffering the rarer form of the disease, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the researchers claimed.

The findings further revealed that youngsters conceived naturally after women waited over a year to get pregnant had a 50 of all live births in 2007 a result of fertility treatment, compared with just 0.5% in 1992. Despite a significant increase in risk, the actual number of children developing leukemia after their mothers undergo fertility treatment remains very small. Only 400 cases of childhood leukemia are diagnosed in UK each year. Three-quarters of those are acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is most common in children between the ages of one and four, and affects more boys than girls.

Do reports like this worry you, or do you think any minuscule 'risk' can be whipped up into a scary statistic?